New Thinking

A while ago, a fabulous man by the name of Chip Judd came and spoke to us on boundaries; amazing stuff and probably my favorite week so far. During the week he made an astonishing point. Roughly, this is what he said, “More than any other person, the one that most people hate more than anyone else is the one they see when they look in the mirror. Which is sad because you spend the most time with you and you spend most of your time loathing yourself.” This is kind of a “duh” statement but when something so universal is put into actual words rather than staying thought creates  a certain power that turns its effect into a whole new light. He later made the point by saying that instead of hating ourselves and putting ourselves down, perhaps we should actually say something positive about ourselves. Maybe we should say radical things about ourselves. For example, for me I have a very hard time believing that people want to be around me and that I’m not wasting people’s time. Instead of thinking this I would say, “I am a fantastic person, I’m hilarious and my smile is contagious.” This sounds ridiculous to me and I feel really idiotic when I say it, but statements, whether positive or negative, change the atmosphere around you. So why not make the atmosphere amazing by saying amazing things about yourself and about other people. You have to live with yourself more than any other person, why not learn to love yourself by saying the things that God says about you? What a novel idea.

Yesterday I got together with my small group, and my lovely Italian leader, Celeste, put a bunch of folded strips of paper in the middle of the table. Everyone had to go around, take a random strip, and read OUT LOUD (gasp) what was on the paper. Each piece had a phrase of how we should see ourselves. They. Were. Awesome. The most amazing part about it was each person kept drawing pieces- at random- things that held a certain theme for themselves. For one girl, she kept getting things about love and marriage, another got things about loving herself and self-acceptance, and I kept getting things about strength and being a warrior.

The fact that God, my Daddy, is really a daddy and loves me enough just to give me encouraging things with the same THEME is cool. Celeste gave out packets of things we have to say over ourselves and report back to her by next week how it has affected us. I’m pretty sure it will work ridiculously well.